ICC Projected to Exhaust Funds

This year the Inter Club Council at Southern Oregon University is projected to spend the entire $90,000 allocated for various clubs on campus. “Last year they ended the year with $10,000 in excess, this year they’re not going to do that,” said Larry Locke, advisor for ICC.

“Anyone that works in the university that I’ve talked to says this is the first time that ICC is set to actually spent all of their funds,” said Locke.

ICC had an emergency meeting to discuss the issue of low funds and to allow students to voice their concerns. The ICC is composed of on campus clubs, working together to share club information and development. An extension of the ICC is the ICCAC (Inter Club Council Allocation Committee) which is responsible for the fund appropriation.

“Essentially we just did our job really really well,” said ICC director Molly Danforth. In fall term of 2016 ICC was allocated $90,000 to spend on clubs while SOU clubs requested a total of $100,000.

ICC is left with $1,000 in spending money for the duration of the year, according to Nicole Hoefflinger, chair of ICCAC this year. “This is a really big milestone, that we’ve spent all of our funds,” said Danforth. With $1,000 left in the fund, ICC is encouraging student clubs to find money elsewhere for the continuation of the school year.

Despite limited funding ICCAC has available for on campus clubs, Danforth is making sure clubs know that they are not being forgotten. “So basically we just want to show the clubs that we are still there for them and even though we are out of funds we’re still supporting them,” he said.

Danforth and the rest of the ICC board is focusing on encouraging clubs to seek other funding and fundraising in order to retain extra funding. “We’re not going to leave them in the dust, we are going to help them in any way we can; we’re going to encourage them to seek other funding sources,” said Danforth.

“In the past, the way last year and previous years worked I think that the board was very fiscally conservative,” said Locke. According to Locke, this year the ICC was set up a lot different than last year. “The wording use to be ‘we only have $90,000 to give to the clubs. This year it came across like ‘we have $90,000 to spend. Dream big,’” he said.

“The fourth ICC session this year we did a complete hour of a mock ICCAC hearing,” said Locke. In addition to students learning how to properly request funds, clubs in good standing for two years were able to request annual funding for their club rather than requesting funding for each term. “So a lot of the groups that requested annual budgets they would’ve been receiving that money more periodically but it seemed like a lot of the money went away faster,” said Locke.

In order to ensure the rest of the ICCAC funding is allocated appropriately they are providing a specific percentage of money based on what each club requested, provided the clubs still present and request for the funds. For the next school year ICCAC has been granted an addition $3,000 to start the year with $93,000.